The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

The novel The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn has created a lot of controversy throughout its history, but is considered the first American novel. The importance of Huck Finn in the realm of United States history is extraordinary and the time period it presents to the reader is one of, if not the most important part of American history. This period represents a period in which slavery and racism is at an unprecedented level, thus the book portrays this accurately while trying to present the reader with a better understanding of the period and the negatives of the time. The novel takes place in the 1840s South, a period in which slavery was the catalyst of the economic system, but Mark Twain, the author, disagreed with slavery and thought it was wrong. He used the novel The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn to accurately represent the period while presenting the reader with his personal stance on slavery and various other political issues of the time. In the novel The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn author Mark Twain has been criticized for his usage of derogatory terms, but the usage of such inflammatory words is needed to reflect the time period while also exposing the injustice of slavery.

In recent years, many critics of the novel argue that the inflammatory language and the negative portrayal of Jim, a black slave, would be harmful to students and should not be discussed in a school setting. Mackenzie Spicer, a sophomore at James Madison University, asks the question: if these critics “have their way might we soon be reading books with entire sentences, paragraphs, or even pages blacked out so as not to “offend” anyone?”(Spicer, 2013). Over the last decade or so, political correctness has taken a forefront over society’s ability to learn and judge whether something is right or wrong. The importance of students being exposed to the injustices caused to an entire race far exceeds the negative results it may have. Sometimes, people need to feel uncomfortable with a certain discussion or topic in order to truly learn and understand. Slavery and racism is a topic many people want to ignore and just forget about, but that can not happen because as a society we need to teach the younger generations about this horrific period in the history of the United States, so they can better understand the issues in today's society. Even over a century later, slavery and racism still persist in our world today, thus the importance for students to learn about it in a controlled school setting is extremely important.

Twain depicts the era in which he is trying to capture very accurately, which is very rare to have such an account of the time period. The importance of such an accurate representation of the time period for students only strengthens the argument as to why Huckleberry Finn is such an important novel in American history. Peaches Henry indicates that “the novel has been criticized, censored, and banned for an array of perceived failings, including obscenity, atheism, bad grammar, coarse manners, low moral tone, and antisouthernism”(Henry, 2002). During this period in history, the obscenity, bad grammar, low moral tone, etc. were part of the